Criminology

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illegal activities of people and institutions whose acknowledged purpose is profit through legitimate business transactions; use illegal business practices to merchandise what are normally legitimate commercial products; any business-related act that ses deceit, deception, or dishonesty to carry out criminal enterprise

Cyber Crime

people using the instruments of modern technology for criminal purposes

Organized crime

illegal activities of people and organizations whose acknowledged purpose is profit through illegitimate business enterprise; use illegal marketing techniques to distribute otherwise legal products and services

White-collar crime: Edwin Sutherland

focused on corporate criminality and crimes committed by wealthy indutrialists

general public, the organization that employs the offender, or a competing organization

White-Collar Crime: Stings and Swindles

people using their institutional or business position to trick others out of their money; have little shame when defrauding people out of their money; target the elderly, sick, and infirm

White-collar crime: chiseling

regularly cheating an organization, its consumers, or both; may be individuals who want to make quick profits in their own businesses, or employees of large organizations who decide to cheat on obligations to their own company or its clients by doing something contrary to either the law or company policy

Professional Chiseling

Professionals use their positions to chisel clients

Securities Fraud

takes place on the commodities and stock markets, where individuals engage in deceptive practices that are prohibited by the federal law; churning (illegal means to cheat an organization, its consumers or both on a regular basis), front running (placing broker's personal orders ahead of a customers large order to profit from the markets effects of the trade), bucketing (skimming customer trading profits by falsifying trade information)

Individual Exploitation of Institutional Position

Exploitation occurs when the victim has a clear right to expect a service, and the offender threatens to withhold the service unless an additional payment or bribery is forthcoming

Influence peddling and bribery

Sometimes individuals holding important institutional positions sell power, influence and information to outsiders who have an interest in influencing or predicting the activities of the institution

Influence peddling

takes bribes in order to use their positions to grant favors and/or sell information to which their co-conspirators aren't entitled

Victims of Influence Peddling

organizations compromised by its employees for their own intersts and the people who pay for those organizations and expect them to be run in a fair and legal manner

Influence Peddling in the Government

Common for government workers and office holders to engage in official corruption

Influence Peddling in Business

Payola (practice of record companies paying radio stations to play songs without making listeners aware of the bribes); Foriegn Corrupt Practices Act (criminal offense to bribe foriegn officials or to make other questionable overseas payments

Embezzlement and Employee Fraud

individuals use their positions to embezzle company funds or appropriate company property for themselves; Victim: company or organization that employs the criminal

Blue-Collar Fraud

Pilferage (systematic theft of company property by employees); employee theft is explained by factors relevant to the work setting, such as job dissatisfaction etc.

theft by an economic client from an organization that advances credit to its clients or reimburses them for services rendered

Health Care Fraud

some dctors engage in fraud in obtaining patients and administering their treatment; federal law prohibits arrangments that tend to corrupt medical judgement and put the providers bottom line ahead of the patients well-being

Tax evasion

victim is the government that is cheated by one of its clients, the errant tax payer to whom it extended credit by allowing the tax payer to delay paying taxes on money he/she had already earned

Corporate Crime

powerful institutions or their representitives willfully violate the laws that restrain these institutions from doing social harm or require them to do social good

when contractors provide the government or other corporations with incomplete or misleading information on how much it will actually cost to fulfill the contracts on which they are bidding, or use mischarges once the contracts are signed

False Claims Advertising

knowlingly and purposely advertise a product as possesing qualities that the maufacturer realizes it doesn't have

Worker Safety/Environmental Crimes

Many different types of environmental crimes; major enforcement against environmental crimes in the EPA

White Collar Crime: Rationalization/Neutralization View

Rationalizations allow offenders' financial needs to be met without compromising their values; Neutralization- everyone else does it, not my fault or responsibility, no one is hurt except insurance companies, and they are wealthy

White-Collar Crime: Corporate Culture View

some business organizations promote white-collar criminality in the same way that lower-class culture encourages the development of gangs and street crime

White-Collar Crime: Self-Control View

Motives are the same as those that produce any other criminal behavior, low self-control, inclined to follow momentary impulses without considering the long-term costs of such behavior

Controlling White-Collar Crime

compliance strategies (rely on the threat of economic sanctions or civil penalties to control potential violators); detterence strategies (apprehending violators and punishing them rather than creating conditions that induce conformity to the law)

1) rapidly evolving 2) difficult to detect through traditional law enforcement channels 3) its control demands that agents of the justice system develop technical skills that match those of the perpetrators

Computer Fraud

prosecuted under larceny or fraud

Denial-of-Service Attack

attempt to extort money from legitimate users of an internet service by threatening to prevent them from accessing the service; may involve threats of or actual flooding of an internet site with millions of bogus messages or orders so that the services will be tied up and unable to perform as promised

Illegal Copyright Infringment

warez (efforts of organized groups to download and sell copyrighted software in violation of its license); file sharing (programs that allow internet users to download music and other copyrighted material without paying the artists and record producers their rightful loyalties

Internet Securities Fraud

intentionally manipulate the securities marketplace for profit

Internet securities fraud 3 types

Market maipulation (individual tries to control the price of stock by interfering with the natural forces of supply and demand) Fraudulent offerings of securities (fraudulently sell securities) Illegal touting (make securities recommendations and fail to disclose that they are being paid to disseminate their favorable postions

E-tailing Fraud

illegally buying or selling merchandise on the net; failure to deliver on promised purchases or services, while others involve the substitution of cheaper or used material for higher-quality purchases

Identity theft

when a person uses the internet to steal someone's indentity and/or impersonate the victim to open a new credit card account or conduct some other financial transaction

Phishing

identity thieves create false emails and/or websites that look legitimate but are designed to gain illegal access to a victims personal information

Cyber Crime and Law Enforcment Agencies

fed gov is now operating a number of organizations to control cyber fraud

Characteristics of Organized Crime

conspirational activity involving the coordination of numerous people in the planning and execution of illegal acts or in the pursuit of a legitimate objective by unlawful means, economic gain as its primary goal, although power and status may also be motivating factors, not limited to providing illicit services, employs predatory tactics, by experience, custom and practice, organized crime's conspirational groups are usually very quick and effective in controlling and disciplining their members, associates, and victims

eastern european (scene of massive buildup of crime since the fall of the soviet union, prey upon women in the poorest areas of europe and sell them into virtual sexual slavery)

Controlling organized crime

Interstate and foriegn travel or transportation in aid or racketeering enterprises act, racketeer influenced and corrupt organization act (did not create new categories of crimes but rather new catagories of offenses in racketeering activity, which it defined as involvement in two r more acts prohibited by 24 existing federal and 8 state stautues), enterprise theory of investigation (focus is on criminal enterprise and investigation attacks on the structure of the criminal enterprise rather than on criminal acts viewed as isolated incidents)